The Twisted Road

I look back and see the twisted road, the empty faces and the saturated smiles. The lost key in the locked car, the red ribbon trailing behind me on the floor, a way home I will never take. I've got empty pockets but there's still a way out for me. No light ahead only headlights behind me. A harsh glare and the Doppler washes away to the west, the path of a dying sun. As the sparrow's wings eclipse the moon, I wonder where my feet are taking me, each step an effort.

Geoff

It feels like the way it should feel, strapping on the helmet, slapping down the visor and pulling on the well worn leather gloves. They say road rash hurts a lot, and they never lied. I have fallen so many times on this bike and was almost killed once when I skidded on a pool of oil in the middle of the highway. Each time, he had been there to help me up, to guide me as I safely steer my scratched up bike back on the road. I love the feel of the wind breezing through the tips of my hair not under the helmet, the freedom of riding this road to the end at unhampered speeds. I feel light riding this bike, almost as if the wheels were not touching the ground. Almost as if we were borne on wings. It gets claustrophobic under the helmet sometimes and the visor decreases visibility as much as lab goggles sometimes do.

A Story for Rebecca

It was bright and cloudless the day they made the final decision; sunny, but not hot because of the delightful wind that wreaks havoc with stray hair and wayward leaves. She was sitting on the curb of the parking lot that belongs equally to the nearby church and hospital feeling a bit forlorn, having recently escaped the stifling confines of a hospital room crowded with members of her extended family. It was not that she felt nothing that she was outside while the rest of her family grieved by her grandmother’s bedside. She did not know how to comfort people, did not know how to be both eloquent and soothing, to say the right words at the appropriate time and to accompany all of the above with a warm gesture to show that she cared. At times, she wondered intermittently whether the people who were able to remain articulate were sincere or merely repeating like automatons what they feel is expected of them. Her arms ached to hold her mother but hung uselessly at her side as her mother resisted various attempts to be touched. Watching her family consoling each other in soft voices, she had never felt so awkward or so hopelessly inarticulate for a very long time.

In Memory

Image from ~YaraKlaproos at deviantart. 

It was a scorching summer day.

She was sitting underneath the large oak tree in her favourite park located in the out fringes of town, a pretty picture of insouciance, twirling a freshly picked daisy between her thumb and forefinger like she had not a care in the world. Nature was ringed in a beautiful sunlit halo around her, but her eyes were unfocused, vacant and unseeing. She was remembering; voices carried to her by an unfelt wind.

Time can never mend the careless whispers of a good friend.

On Fortuitous Occurrences

He noticed her from across the street. It was not the first time he had seen her, with her flowing chestnut- brown hair and her acoustic guitar. He would watch her sometimes, watch her fingers stroke the strings lovingly, strumming both unfamiliar and nostalgic patterns. But that was not why he had been following her for months, or had it already been a year? When she sings...he sighed in remembrance. She was his muse, but he would never tell her this because he had never spoken to her. He lacked the courage. 

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